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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1975 Jun;72(6):2371–2374. doi: 10.1073/pnas.72.6.2371

Immunosuppressive Effect of Syngeneic Thymus Cells on Allograft Rejection

Wulf Droege 1
PMCID: PMC432760  PMID: 1094465

Abstract

Transfer of thymus cells from young chickens to syngeneic recipients suppresses the allograft rejection between strains differing at the major histocompatibility (B) locus. Thymus cell transfer in combination with a light whole body irradiation (360 R) prolongs significantly the mean rejection time of skin allografts and leads in a proportion of recipients to long-lasting graft survival (>200 days). Three weeks after the cell transfer, the suppression appears to be antigen specific, as judged by the normal reactivity against third-party skin grafts. From the types of thymus cell preparations that are effective in these experiments, it is inferred that the suppressor cell is a bursa-dependent lymphocyte, which is predominantly found in the young chicken thymus and which is different from B-lymphocytes, B-precursor cells, or graft-versus-host-reactive T-cells.

Keywords: suppressor cells, immunosuppression, skin graft rejection

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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